THINKING, DOING, LEARNING

Alternative Learning Place (ALP): An Alternative to Traditional School

What does this alternative look like? Students working in teams on exciting and engaging hands-on projects that they’re interested in, with goals they care about; students practicing the skills they need for lifelong success in the real-world, such as teamwork, goal conflict resolution, judgment, persuasion, management, and communication; and students making mistakes and learning from those mistakes to do better next time.

Our engineering curriculum for 6-9 year olds is complete. It calls on students to work through a series of engineering projects, by following a basic engineering process: design, build, test, and revise. While students solve problems and complete challenges on their projects they learn about engineering, including what engineers think about and do on the job (adapted to the appropriate level for the age), and most importantly they practice real-world skills needed for lifelong success.

Ultimately our goal is to develop a wide range of yearlong curricula in a variety of real-world fields such as media and medicine, for students aged 5-18 years. Students will be able to choose a curriculum in their area of interest, at their age level, and work on the curriculum for an entire year, completing a series of true to life, hands-on projects in that field.